Alan Parker - IMDb IMDb Director | Writer | Soundtrack Prior to moving into film, Alan was noted as one of London's most talented advertising copywriters. He worked for the Collet Dickinson Pearce (CDP) ad agency in the 1960's and early 1970's, and began directing his own tvc scripts in their basement. Formed a partnership with David Puttnam as his producer (Puttnam had been a photographers' agent), ... See full bio » Born: a list of 35 people created 03 Mar 2011 a list of 41 people created 04 Apr 2011 a list of 33 people created 08 Nov 2011 a list of 43 people created 11 Dec 2013 a list of 29 people created 3 weeks ago Do you have a demo reel? Add it to your IMDbPage How much of Alan Parker's work have you seen? User Polls Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 21 wins & 28 nominations. See more awards » Known For 1971 S.W.A.L.K.

(original story and screenplay) Hide Soundtrack (5 credits) 1996 Evita (producer: "A Cinema in Buenos Aires, 26 July 1952", "Requiem for Evita", "Oh, What a Circus", "On This Night of a Thousand Stars", "Eva and Magaldi", "Eva Beware of the City", "Buenos Aires", "Another Suitcase in Another Hall", "Goodnight and Thank You", "The Lady's Got Potential", "Charity Concert", "The Art of the Possibles", "I'd Be Surprisingly Good for You", "Hello and Goodbye", "Peron's Latest Flame", "A New Argentina", "On the Balcony of the Casa Rosada 1", "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina", "On the Balcony of the Casa Rosada 2", "High Flying, Adored", "Rainbow High", "Rainbow Tour", "The Actress Hasn't Learned the Lines (You'd Like to Hear)", "And the Money Kept Rolling In (And Out)", "Partido Feminista", "She Is a Diamond", "Santa Evita", "Waltz for Eva and Che",

 "Your Little Body's Slowly Breaking Down", "You Must Love Me", "Eva's Final Broadcast", "Latin Chant", "Lament", "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" (end title version) - uncredited) 1994 The Road to Wellville (lyrics: "Where The Spirits Soar") 1990 Come See the Paradise (lyrics: "Jack's Theatre Song") / (writer: "Kawamura Family Theme") Alan Parker - Director, Writer, Producer - Official Website - Director, Writer, Producer Alan Parker Director, Writer, Producer Sir Alan Parker is a director, writer and producer.

His feature films have won nineteen BAFTA awards, ten Golden Globes and ten Oscars. His films include Bugsy Malone , Midnight Express , Mississippi Burning , The Commitments , Evita , Fame , Birdy , Angel Heart and Angela’s Ashes . He was founding chairman of the UK Film Council, a position he held for five years, and prior to that was chairman of the BFI. Sir Alan received the CBE in 1995 and a knighthood in 2002. He is also an Officier Des Arts et Lettres (France). BBC News | FILM | Alan Parker: Pioneer of UK cinema Monday, 31 December, 2001, 00:00 GMT Alan Parker: Pioneer of UK cinema Sir Alan directed Angela's Ashes in 1999 Alan Parker has been given a knighthood for his tireless promotion of the UK film industry. Already a CBE, he has long been an outspoken critic of the lack of funding for UK film forcing homegrown film talent to Hollywood. In 1999 he was handed the chairmanship of the British Film Council, giving him the opportunity to steer the country's film policy.

Bugsby Malone was Sir Alan's first feature film Unlike many film-makers, Sir Alan has not been bound by any film genre, directing anything from musicals to hard-hitting political dramas. And awards have poured his way since he stepped from behind an advertising agency desk to make his mark in the movies. The London-born director, writer and producer started his full-length film career with the musical Bugsy Malone. The 1976 hit saw a cast made up entirely of children, in a pastiche of 1920s gangster movies. True story His vision earned the movie five Bafta awards and an Oscar nomination for best music for composer Paul Williams. Sir Alan's next project saw a great departure from his debut. Midnight Express in 1978 was a harrowing true story of a young man's incarceration in a Turkish jail for drug smuggling. The film picked up two Academy Awards for best music and for Oliver Stone as best writer. It was also nominated for four others, including a best director nod for Sir Alan, and picked up six Golden Globes and four Baftas.

Mississippi Burning was a powerful drama about racisim Back in the musical genre, Sir Alan tackled the big screen version of Fame, a film about performing arts students in New York. Although the there were many big song and dance numbers there was also a political message about race and poverty. The Wall Fame won two Oscars, for best score and best song. The 1980s saw Sir Alan direct movies such as family drama Shoot the Moon, the seminal Pink Floyd film The Wall and the horror Angel Heart. It also saw him direct the film Mississippi Burning, a hard-hitting thriller about race in the deep south. Sir Alan was nominated for a best director Oscar and the best cinematography award was won by Peter Biziou. The 90s saw another big string of hits such as the Irish comedy The Commitments, The Road to Wellville and Evita, starring Madonna. Outstanding contribution His last big-screen project was the adaptation of Frank McCourt's Pulitzer Prize-winning Angela's Ashes, which he directed and produced. Sir Alan tackled the Pink Floyd movie Even before taking the chairmanship of the Film Institute, Sir Alan was interested in promoting the UK industry.

He was a founding member of the Directors' Guild of Great Britain and has lectured at film schools around the world. Sir Alan received the Michael Balcon Award in 1985 from Bafta for his outstanding contribution to UK cinema. He was made a CBE in 1995, also for his services to the UK film industry. See also: Alan Parker - Director - Films as Director:, Other Films:, Publications Alan Parker - Director Alan Parker - Director Nationality: English. Born: Islington, London, 14 February 1944. Family: Married Annie Inglis, 1966; four children.

Career: Mailboy, later writer and director, for advertising industry, London, from mid-1960s; with producer Alan Marshall, set up Alan Parker Film Company to make advertisements, 1970; directed The Evacuees for TV, and first feature, Bugsy Malone , 1975; founding member and vice-chairman, Directors Guild of Great Britain, and member, British Screen Advisory Council; directed The Turnip Head's Guide to British Cinema for Thames TV, 1986; signed deal with Tri-Star Pictures, 1989; also cartoonist and novelist. Awards: British Academy Award for Best Screenplay, for Bugsy Malone , 1984; Special Jury Prize, Cannes Festival, for Birdy , 1984; Michael Balcon Award for Outstanding Contribution to Cinema (with Alan Marshall), 1984; BAFTA Award for Best Director, for The Commitments , 1991. Agent: c/o Judy Scott-Fox, William Morris Agency, Inc., 151 El Camino Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90212, U.S.A.

Address: Lives in Richmond, Surrey, and Los Angeles. Films as Director: Puddles in the Rain , London, 1977. Hares in the Gate (cartoons), London, 1983. A Filmmaker's Diary , London, 1984. In the Lap of the Gods and the Hands of the Beatles , St. Louis, 1990. The Making of Evita , London, 1998. By PARKER: articles— Interviews in Time Out (London), 23 July 1976 and 11 August 1978. Interviews in Focus on Film (London), April 1980. Interview in Cinema (London), August 1982. "Alan Parker on Pink Floyd—The Wall ," in American Cinematographer (Los Angeles), October 1982. Cartoons, in Sight and Sound (London), Summer 1983. "Britain's Angry Young Man," an interview with A. Horton, in Cineaste (New York), vol. 15, no. 2, 1986.

Interview in Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), vol. 15, no. 3, 1987. "The Making of Angel Heart ," in Films and Filming (London), September and October 1987. "Dialogue on Film: Alan Parker," in American Film (Washington, D.C.), January-February 1988. Interview in American Film (Washington, D.C.), September 1990. "Paradise Lost: Production of the Motion Picture Come See the Paradise ," in Premiere , January 1991. Film Dope (Nottingham), April 1994. "Cereal Thriller," an interview with Brian Case, in Time Out (London), 11 January 1995. Alan Parker Interview with Barry Norman, in Radio Times (London), 28 January 1995. "An Iconic Evita ," an interview with Stephen Pizzello, in American Cinematographer (Hollywood), January 1997. "The Thoughts of Chairman Alan," an interview with Nick James, in Sight and Sound (London), November 1997.

On PARKER: articles— Roddick, Nick, "Alan Parker: From Bugsy to Birdy," in Cinema Papers (Melbourne), July 1985. Houston, Penelope, "Parker, Attenborough, Anderson," in Sight and Sound (London), Summer 1986. Smith, Gavin, "Mississippi Gambler: Alan Parker Rides Again," in Film Criticism (Meadville, Pennsylvania), vol. 24, no. 6, 1988. Stam, H., "Het ernstige onderwerp en het grote publiek," in Skoop , April 1989. "Alan Parker," in Film a Doba , January 1990. Zimmer, J., "Alan Parker," in Revue du Cinema , July-August 1990. Apted, M., "One on One: Michael Apted and Alan Parker," in American Film , September 1990. Kirk, P., "Working for High Standards," in Boxoffice , January 1991. Chase, D., "Alan Parker," in Millimeter , February 1991.

Lally, K., "Director Parker Makes Hearty Commitments ," in Film Journal , August 1991. Dibbell, J., "Straight outta Dublin," in Village Voice , August 20, 1991. Fuller, Graham, article in Interview , August 1991. Kauffmann, Stanley, article in New Republic , September 16, 1991. Maslin, Janet, article in New York Times , October 28, 1994. Denby, David, " The Road to Wellville ," in New York , November 14, 1994. Benoliel, B., "Alan Parker," in Film Dope (Nottingham), April 1994. Griffin, N., "Madonna Tangos with Evita ," in Newsweek , 16 December 1996. Elder, S., "Musical Man," in New Yorker , 31 March 1997.

* * * Of all his fellow graduates from the prolific British commercials school of the 1960s (Ridley and Tony Scott, Hugh Hudson, and others), Alan Parker appears to have made far and away the most successful complete transition to theatrical filmmaking. Which is not to say that his movies to date—from Bugsy Malone to Angela's Ashes —have all been wholly successful in either box-office terms, critical reception or, blissfully, both at the same time. However, what Parker has managed always to achieve, with admittedly varying degrees of success, is that elusive blend of strong story and elegant frame, a symbiosis that tends regularly to elude other directors schooled in (and too often hamstrung by) the purely visual. Two themes could be said to dominate Parker's work: children and controversy. After an award-winning teleplay, The Evacuees , about the bittersweet plight of evacuated London children during World War II, he made his feature debut with Bugsy Malone , an ingenious gangster spoof substituting kids for adults and cream balls for bullets.

It was energetic and surprisingly un-quaint, ingredients that also characterised his high-voltage Fame , centering on a group of ambitious students at the New York High School for the Performing Arts. In between, though, controversy had first raised its head in the form of Midnight Express , an ultimately reprehensible and unashamedly manipulative piece of docudrama, unhappily dignified by sheer technique, about the supposed fate of a young American jailed for drug offences in Turkey.

Later, after both Angel Heart , a labyrinthine Faustian tale which was briefly threatened with an American "X" rating, and Mississippi Burning , a powerful civil rights drama that was accused of blatant Hollywood-isation, Parker's unquenchable passion and his admitted preference for "the theatrical edge" have continued to be, rather unfairly, mistaken for a filmmaking arrogance that tends to help make him less than a darling to those critics whom he has always termed "the Sight & Sound mafia." Shoot the Moon , Parker's most personal film about marital mishaps and muddled offspring, and Birdy , which seamlessly transposed novelist William Wharton's post-World War II traumas to a post-Vietnam setting, best demonstrate his theatrical style carefully crafted into (though never subsuming) strong content. Especially the latter, which deals with two emotionally damaged young men whose bond transcends the scars resulting in a message—common to much of Parker's work—that is joyously life-affirming. In 1991 Parker released The Commitments , a film based on a novel by Irish writer Roddy Doyle.

The film, which garnered mixed reviews, told the story of the efforts of a ragtag group of musicians with widely varied individual agendas and their efforts to launch a successful band. 1994's The Road to Wellville , meanwhile, despite an impressive cast headed by Anthony Hopkins, was a decidedly unsuccessful adaptation of T. Coraghessan Boyle's novel. —Quentin Falk Shooting from the lip | Film | The Guardian Movies Shooting from the lip Alan Parker once said our film industry makes great TV, but is not ambitious enough. With a new film - Angela's Ashes - out this week and a new job as chairman of the Film Council, how does the director of hits such as Midnight Express and Mississippi Burning see the future for British movies?

Sunday 9 January 2000 05.37 EST First published on Sunday 9 January 2000 05.37 EST Share on Messenger Close 'Oh I'm much calmer, less controlling, more relaxed these days,' says Alan Parker, smiling, telling me how he has not only written and directed the film version of Frank McCourt's bestseller Angela's Ashes, but also produced the film's poster on his Xerox at home and done the graphic design for the press pack. In the past, he admits, he has been fond of suggesting that 'directing a film is a crash course in megalomania' and that he 'enjoys the Stalinist approach to moviemaking - as long as I am Stalin' (in homage to this he has a bust of Uncle Joe in his office presented to him by his colleagues). But all that has changed. Parker has matured, he suggests, mellowed even. Having waged guerrilla warfare against the film establishment in Britain for nearly three decades, he now is that establishment, chairman of new Labour's new Film Council.

The perceived chippiness of the Islington advertising man in Hollywood has, he implies, been replaced by a new kind of phlegmatic wisdom. He reflects on this personal evolution for a moment. 'Of course my film crew would fall about laughing if they heard me say any of that,' he concedes. Parker, explaining his new-found laissez-faire, has a pent-up quality, which seems like it might dissolve into rage. He wears his jacket buttoned and straining, as if to hold his impatience in; he mostly talks gruffly at the floor. 'When I started directing I disagreed with a lot of people and an entire philosophy about what made a good film,' he says. 'a) They thought because you've got a cockney accent you're stupid, which is the ultimate insult, and b) if you disagreed with that intellectually snobby establishment they said you just had a chip on your shoulder. It was easy shit to put out, but I don't think anyone buys that any more...' In any case, he is at great pains to stress, he no longer feels the need to continually fight his artistic corner.

'I have always said the same thing,' he says, 'that American cinema is the cinema of the audience. I am just as much an auteur as any so-called European director, except that I have to justify people giving me a lot of money. It would be much easier to make an "art" film for my relatives and three critics. But, as I say, I don't think I need to make that argument any more.' For someone who no longer feels the need to explain himself, Alan Parker does a good deal of explaining. He has just returned from several weeks of television interviews in America and Europe promoting his film. 'In Germany you get seven minutes; in America you get four, including a clip, so it's really just "good evening" and you're off.' Which is just as well, really, because the more he talks about the process of film-making, the less he feels he has anything to say. 'So much of it is instinctive. I'm sure Trevor Nunn can explain it, but I'm so badly educated I've never been able to articulate it.' Still, as he insists, he's not chippy.

Parker first read Angela's Ashes as a manuscript, long before the book was published, and tried to buy the film rights then, only to discover that they had already been acquired by the American producer Scott Rudin. When the project eventually came his way, a screenplay had been written, but he went back to the book and started again. 'It was a matter of plundering and giving it a bit more heart,' he says, and anyway, he's always written his own films. 'It's the only way to get the thing really inside your head.' To orient himself in the Limerick of Frank McCourt's childhood, Parker used a map of the book's key locations he'd found on a Japanese web site for Angela's Ashes obsessives. The site brought home to him the extraordinary and universal appeal of a book which had sold six million copies in around 30 countries. Its author was a big help and inspiration, too: 'Frank had been a schoolteacher in New York for so many years that he has this endlessly encouraging and patient manner,' says Parker. 'Even though, when I finished it, it did feel a bit like putting an essay in to your English teacher.

You know, "must try harder".' (McCourt returns the compliment suggesting that Parker understood the book so well because 'he comes from a blue-collar background and I come from a no-collar background'.) The difficulties of putting McCourt's memoir on film were always likely to be in preventing its sentiment from becoming too mawkish: it begins, brightly, with the death of the author's baby sister and infant twin brothers from a mixture of illness and malnutrition, and then the trouble really starts. Parker succeeds in keeping the grimness in check through perfor mances of great intensity and restraint from Robert Carlyle and Emily Watson, who play McCourt's parents, as well as inspirational, and often comic, debuts by the boys who play the growing Frank (typically Parker auditioned 15,000 children to find the Franks he wanted: 'If you get the casting right, the rest takes care of itself,' he says). Even so, as in the book, the real stars of Angela's Ashes are Poverty and Damp, which stalk the hopes of the ever-optimistic McCourt children like personifications from medieval mystery plays. This is perhaps the wettest film ever made.

The rain sweeps in from the Shannon ('the damp heart and silent villain of our story,' as Parker has it). It sluices through the back alleys of Limerick before collecting in big plashy puddles in the McCourts' front room. Ever the craftsman, Parker spent a couple of months at Technicolor, working with a new grading process that holds more of the silver in the print. Thus, as the McCourt family push their soggy belongings in dripping hand carts from one waterlogged basement to another they are bathed in a kind of sepulchral sepia glitter which lends some scenes a monumental pathos (though there are occasional moments, too, when you feel as if you are watching the most lavish Hovis ad ever made). Two decades ago, the New Yorker 's distinguished film critic Pauline Kael suggested that Alan Parker had 'technique to burn'. Some of the credit for this goes to his crew, many of whom graduated with him from Cinzano commercials and 'Nice One Cyril' to Bugsy Malone and Midnight Express in the late Seventies and have stayed with him ever since.

'One of the great things about working with your friends,' he suggests, 'is that I am able to say to them, "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here." As director you're Jack the Lad, but I'm never sure that I'm right, I'm just as insecure as anyone else.' It adds to the sense of loyalty that seems a characteristic of Alan Parker projects: 'Not so much Alan Parker against the world as Alan Parker and his crew against the world,' is how he puts it. Parker's film's often seem likely military campaigns, with him cast in the role of a pugnacious general under fire. When, for example, he made Mississippi Burning, Time magazine branded Parker's portrayal of the passivity of blacks during the Civil Rights movement 'a cinematic lynching' of history. Parker also exercised America's moral majority and the censors with Angel Heart when he poured chicken blood onto Mickey Rourke's buttocks as he had 'voodoo sex' with Lisa Bonet. He survived, too, making Evita in Buenos Aires, where he was greeted with death threats after casting Madonna - 'Satan in drag' according to the city's bishop - as the lead.

He eventually persuaded Carlos Menem to allow him to film from the balcony of the presidential palace and even coaxed Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice to collaborate on a new song. Angela's Ashes was a doddle in comparison, though he did run into difficulties with Limerick's Catholic establishment, which refused to let him film in the city's churches (he went to Dublin instead). It was the most harmonious set he had been on, he says, and, after almost a decade working out of Los Angeles, it was good to be back filming close to home. A return to London enabled him to be near his four children, though the overriding reason he came back was to take up the challenge of building a new British film industry, initially as head of the BFI, now as chairman of the Film Council with a £27 million annual budget. In the past, and notably in his 1984 TV polemic A Turniphead's Guide to the Cinema, Parker has been an outspoken critic of little England 'red bus' movies and the 'fiefdoms who went out of their way to help Derek Jarman but don't help anyone else'.

He once ran a one-man campaign suggesting he would be forced to leave the country if Peter Greenaway made another movie, distributing posters declaring: 'Instant narcolepsy - see a Greenaway film.' In a 1997 Bafta lecture Parker suggested that the British film industry made great TV, but not ambitious films in the tradition of David Lean and Carol Reed. He included himself, a little tentatively, in this latter tradition, and also his old friend and sparring partner David Puttnam. Some people have suggested that the Blair confidante Puttnam was behind Parker's appointment to the Film Council, but he barks a laugh at the suggestion. 'He would have been more instrumental in trying to prevent me from getting it,' he says. 'He hates me treading on his toes.' Though they are on good terms now, the pair fell out for a couple of years after Puttnam felt Parker had not given him enough support when he was head of Columbia Pictures. But now that he is poacher-turned-gamekeeper, I wonder, what plans does Parker have for the new organisation?

How does the old firebrand plan to shake up the industry, kick out the old establishment, bring on a new generation of Leans and Reeds and Parkers and Puttnams? 'Well, it's a bit premature for me to say,' he offers, suddenly coy. 'I'm going to be very diplomatic.' 'It's very difficult,' he suggests, before confiding that 'there are things the council agrees on and things that we don't'. When pressed, he concludes that 'it's all at a very delicate stage'. It may not be the turniphead rhetoric of old. But in his new role as cheerleader for a Blairite film revolution, Alan Parker, it seems, is already talking the right language.  Angela's Ashes opens nationwide on 14 January Mississippi Burning Trial: The Movie (1988) December 8, 1988 'Burning': Potent But Problematic "Mississippi Burning" surveys the geography of racism, sheds light on the dark night of the soul. Director Alan Parker stokes the inferno with cruelty, hatred and charring crosses, then sifts the cold ashes for clues.

The mystery, ostensibly about the murder of three young civil rights workers, is the inhumanity of man.... Parker, a director of breadth, not depth, never supplies the big answers, but he does powerfully depict the climate of the Confederacy in the "Freedom Summer" of 1964. Mississippi Burning" offers an appalling litany of white supremacist atrocities in the guise of a buddy detective thriller. Gene Hackman gives a towering performance as Anderson, a former sheriff wise to sleepy Southern streets, and Willem Dafoe is understated as Ward, the principled straight arrow in charge of the FBI's search for three missing civil rights workers. Rita Kempley TIME MAGAZINE January 9, 1989 Fire This Time; With incendiary drama and a lightning pace, Mississippi Burning illuminates an ugly chapter in American History -- and stokes a bitter debate. This movie is full of enough facts to make the viewer suspicious, and enough distortions to be the truth. Maybe it is every bit as unfair to the FBI, which pursued the case vigorously and effectively, as it is to Freedom Riders. But whose truth is it anyway?

Every film -- or every biography or news report or memory -- is distorted, if only by one's perceptions. To create art is to pour fact into form; and sometimes the form shapes the facts. William Randolph Hearst never said "Rosebud," and Evita Peron didn't sing pop, and Richard III was probably a swell guy, no matter how Shakespeare libeled him. This is what artists do: shape ideas and grudges and emotions into words and sounds and pictures. They see "historical accuracy" as a creature of ideological fashion. Artists take the long view; they figure their visions can outlast political revisionism. Mississippi Burning is rooted as firmly in film history as it is in social history. It takes its cue not so much from the buddy films as from Warner Bros. melodramas of the 1930s, like Black Legion and They Won't Forget, which seized some social-issue headlines and fit them into brisk, dynamic fiction. It is movie journalism: tabloid with a master touch. And the master, the suave manipulator, is Alan Parker. By avocation he is a caricaturist, and by vocation too.

He chooses gross faces, grand subjects, base motives, all for immediate impact. The redneck conspirators are drawn as goofy genetic trash: there's not a three-digit IQ in the lot, not a chin in a carload. These are not bad men -they're baaaad guys. And the blacks are better than good; their faces reveal them as martyrs, sanctified by centuries of suffering. Caricature is a fine dramatic tradition, when you have two hours to tell a story and a million things to say and show. What Parker hopes to show moviegoers of 1989 is a fable about 1964 -- perhaps the very last historical moment when most American whites could see Southern blacks purely as righteous rebels for a just cause. Richard Corliss THE NEW REPUBLIC January 9, 1989 Docudrama is a dubious genre; something that pretends to be docudrama is even more dubious. Mississippi Burning was patently based on the murder of three civil rights workers in June 1964 -- a local black, James Chaney, and two white Northerners, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.

Admittedly it would be difficult to make a film on that subject and keep it more document than invention, but this film doesn't try very hard. It wants praise for facing facts fearlessly without being bound by them. A few lines, tucked in at the very end after the long closing list of credits, tell us that Mississippi Burning is not factual, that it was only suggested by the facts. This strategy licensed the filmmakers-Chris Gerolmo, the writer, Alan Parker, the director, Frederick Zollo and Robert F. Colesberry, the producers-to lard the story with movie stuff in order to make it "play". . . ..[t]e biggest surprise in the film is that the states of Mississippi and Alabama cooperated in the making of Mississippi Burning. of course the production put money in the pockets of residents in the area-many of them are seen in the film-but I doubt that this would have been decisive 24 years ago. Perhaps the clearest sign of progress in race relations down there is that the location shooting was done where it was.

Stanley Kauffman January 22, 1989 Where Mississippi Burned: Civil rights film rekindles horrors of the state's past The racial violence that erupted in this lumber-milling community 24 years ago is like a festering wound that refuses to heal. . . . "They (the film makers) just want to stir up trouble between the races. It's all out of proportion," declares Lawrence Rainey, the former Neshoba County sheriff who was exonerated of conspiracy charges in connection with the murders. Disagreeing is the 1964 president of the Neshoba County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Jessie Gary considers the picture an important reminder of the mistreatment blacks endured. Hal Lipper NEWSDAY February 12, 1989 Winner, Best Brouhaha; The fireworks over 'Mississippi Burning' have generated unexpected publicity and a box office boost. Will the controversy dampen the film's chances for an Oscar? When the 1988 Academy Award nominations are announced at 5:30 a.m. Hollywood time Wednesday, "Mississippi Burning" is likely to be one of the five nominees for best picture.

Gene Hackman's portrayal of a sometimes unscrupulous, southern-born FBI agent is an equally good bet for best actor recognition. Just how many other Oscars the film will be nominated for, or win, is question making the rounds of studio executive suites. For if there were nominations for the most battered and denounced picture of the year, 11 Mississippi Burning" would have no rivals. For the 4,632 Motion Picture academy voters, the issue is whether a movie should be judged on its own cinematic terms - was the script well-structured, the directing forceful? -- or whether political outcry the movie sparks, the impact of the movie on society, should also be taken into account. taking real-world political considerations into account. An obviously well-intentioned attempt to evoke the half-forgotten racial violence of the "Freedom Summer" of 1964 in segregated Mississippi, the $ 14-million Orion Pictures release has hardly won its makers the congratulations they expected from veterans of that era's civil rights struggle. Instead, the emotionally charged drama has been attacked as an inexcusable twisting of history by Coretta Scott King, Julian Bond and other well-known civil rights movement veterans and African-Americans. NAACP executive director Benjamin L.

Hooks said the film "reeks of dishonesty, deception and fraud." Said Willis Edwards, president of the NAACP's Hollywood-Beverly Hills chapter, "What I have a problem with is the insulting way Orion would even attach its name to such distorted history, causing pain." Martin Kasindorf July 27, 1989 Mississippi Burning In Alan Parker's revisionist thriller, the FBI comes to the rescue of the civil rights movement while the black locals cower in the background. Set in the summer of 1964, 11 Mississippi Burning" offers a litany of KKK atrocities in the guise of a buddy detective mystery. Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe costar as incompatible G-men -- a cagey good oll boy and a principled straight arrow in charge of the FBI's search for three missing civil rights workers. . . . Despite the towering performances of Hackman and McDormand, the movie's epic visuals and Parker's good intentions, "Mississippi Burning" has a bogus feel. Based on an actual case -- the murder of black activist James Chaney and white colleagues Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner -- it's the right story, but with the wrong heroes.

There's this nagging feeling that the story begins where it ought to have ended -- with the deaths of the three young activists. Rita Kempley, Hal Hinson, Joseph McLellan LOS ANGELES TIMES Biography - Alan Parker - Director, Writer, Producer - Official Website - Director, Writer, Producer SIR ALAN PARKER CBE Biography Director, writer, producer Alan Parker, born Islington, London, February 14th, 1944, began his career in advertising as a copywriter and graduated to writing and directing commercials where in the late 60’s he was one of a small group of British directors who revolutionized world advertising. In1980 he received the D&AD Gold President’s Award. Jodie Foster and pie, Pinewood Studios, 1975 In 1974, Parker directed the BBC Television film, The Evacuees, written by Jack Rosenthal, which won the International Emmy Award and a BAFTA Award for direction; the first of seven BAFTA awards Parker has personally received. Parker wrote and directed his first feature film, Bugsy Malone, in 1975.

The film was a musical pastiche of 1920s gangster films with an entire cast of children. The film received eight British Academy Award nominations and five Awards. His second film was the controversial Midnight Express (1977) which won two Oscars and six Academy Award nominations, including one for Parker as Best Director. The film received six Golden Globe Awards and four awards from the British Film Academy. This was followed, in 1979, by Fame, a celebration of youth and the arts in New York which won two Academy Awards, six nominations, four Golden Globe nominations and was later adapted into a successful television series. In 1981 he directed his most personal film, the powerful family drama, Shoot the Moon, starring Diane Keaton and Albert Finney. In the same year he made the seminal Pink Floyd – The Wall the feature film adaptation of the phenomenally successful rock album, which has become a classic of the genre. In 1984, Parker directed Birdy based on the William Wharton novel, starring Nicolas Cage and Matthew Modine, which won the Grand Prix Special Du Jury at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival.

No stranger to controversy, his next film, Angel Heart, written and directed by Parker in 1986 and starring Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro and Lisa Bonet opened in the United States amidst a storm caused by the ‘X’ rating initially imposed on it by the MPAA. Lannie McBride: Jackson,, Mississippi, 1988 In 1988 he directed the Civil Rights drama, Mississippi Burning, starring Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Director for Parker and winning for Best Cinematography. Parker was also awarded the D.W. Griffith Award for directing by the National Board of Review. The film was nominated for five British Academy Awards, winning three. It also won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. In 1989 Parker wrote and directed Come See the Paradise, a family’s story set against the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, starring Dennis Quaid and Tamlyn Tomita.

The Commitments, Dublin, 1990 The Commitments, made in 1990, a story of a young Irish working- class soul band, was awarded a Golden Globe Nomination for Best Picture and won Parker the Best Director prize at the Tokyo Film Festival, as well as British Academy Awards for Editing, Screenplay, Director and Best Picture. In 1993, Parker wrote and directed the anarchic and satirical The Road to Wellville based on the novel by T. Coraghessan Boyle, and starring Anthony Hopkins, Bridget Fonda, Matthew Broderick, John Cusack and Dana Carvey. In 1996, Parker directed, wrote and produced Evita based on the successful stage show by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, and starring Madonna, Antonio Banderas and Jonathan Pryce. The film won three Golden Globe Awards, including Best Picture. Angela’s Ashes based on the Pulitzer Prize winning, best selling memoir by Frank McCourt, was written and directed by Alan Parker in 1999, starring Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle.

His most recent film, The Life of David Gale, a thriller set against the politics of capital punishment in the United States, starred Kevin Spacey, Kate Winslet and Laura Linney and was released in 2003. In all, his films have won nineteen BAFTA awards, ten Golden Globes and ten Oscars. In 1984, to celebrate “British Film Year,” Parker wrote and directed the provocative documentary, A Turnip Head’s Guide To The British Cinema, which underlined his fiercely independent and outspoken views as he lambasted the British film establishment and film critics. It won the British Press Guild Award for the year’s best documentary. Alan Parker is also a novelist and author of the best-selling book written from his own screenplay of Bugsy Malone, published by by HarperCollins in their Essential Modern Classics library. His other novels include Puddles In The Lane, (1977) and The Sucker’s Kiss (2003).

He is also an accomplished cartoonist and three collections of his satirical cartoons have been published: Hares in the Gate, (1982), Making Movies, (1998) and Will Write and Direct for Food, a compendium of twenty years of his cartoons on filmmaking and the film industry, published in October, 2005. A founding member of the Directors Guild of Great Britain, Parker has lectured at film schools around the world. In 1984 he was honored by the British Academy with the prestigious Michael Balcon Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Cinema. In 1998 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Directors Guild of Great Britain and the Lumiere Medal from the Royal Photographic Society. He has also received Lifetime Achievement awards in Chicago, Munich, Prague, Warsaw and Lodg. He holds honorary doctorates from Sunderland University, the University of East Anglia, Southampton Solent University and University Council of Arts, Spain. In January 1998, Parker took up his post as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the British Film Institute and in August, 1999 he was appointed first Chairman of the UK Film Council; a position he held for five years.

In November, 1995 Parker was awarded with a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the British film industry and he received a knighthood in 2002. He is also an Officier des Arts et des Lettres, awarded by the French Government. In 2013 he was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship and also succeeded István Szabó as President of the European Federation of Film Directors: FERA. An Alan Parker Film: MONTAGE Montage of Alan Parker films edited by Kieron Butler Guardian article on Alan Parker’s BAFTA Fellowship Alan Parker on HardTalk Bafta honours Alan Parker, the director who shattered Hollywood's glass ceiling | Film | The Guardian Alan Parker Bafta honours Alan Parker, the director who shattered Hollywood's glass ceiling A bullish Parker yearned to gatecrash the film industry and do things differently. Against the odds, his dreams came true Bafta honours Alan Parker, the Evita and Mississippi Burning director who went from council-estate kid to knight of the realm.

Photograph: Michal Dolezal/Associated Press Share on Messenger Close If Sir Alan Parker ever felt the urge to shoot a Horatio Alger story, charting the hero's journey from working-class upstart to establishment lion, then the rough draft is sitting right under his nose. The protagonist starts out as a chippy young hooligan, purple-faced beneath a pageboy haircut. He winds up white-haired and well-upholstered, a pillar of whatever passes for the British film industry these days. To misquote John Huston in Chinatown: "Politicians, whores and Alan Parker. They all get respectable if they stick around long enough." Parker has directed some decent, clamorous pictures (Bugsy Malone, Mississippi Burning, The Commitments) and some dodgy, clamorous pictures (Evita, Midnight Express, Angela's Ashes). He is a knight of the realm and a former chairman of the now defunct UK Film Council. And yet the CV tells us only half the story. Because Parker, in his pomp, was a vandal, an agitator, a necessary evil.

On balance I think I love him more for what he tore down than what he built in its place; for what he represents as opposed to what he achieved. The director burst on to the scene in the late 1970s, the closest thing the industry had to a punk-rock gobshite, even if his aesthetic was ultimately more Sham 69 than Sex Pistols. He came trailing what he has referred to as "an impure past" as a council-estate kid, shut out of the traditional Oxbridge/BBC route, who learned his craft in advertising instead. Parker hated pretty much everything: critics, the British Film Institute and Merchant-Ivory movies, which he dismissed as "the Laura Ashley school of film-making". He wanted to gatecrash the system and do things differently. Against the odds, his dreams came true. Who cares if the Alan Parker story ended up generating more heat than light? Today, perhaps more than ever, he stands as an inspiration for every ambitious young British film-maker of limited means. He is an object lesson in how bullish self-confidence and a loud voice can overturn applecarts and shatter glass ceilings.

For that, and that alone, he deserves whatever award Bafta cares to throw his way. Guardian film critics Xan Brooks and Catherine Shoard give their view of Sunday's Baftas ceremony, and what it tells us about the likely outcome of the Academy Awards Published: 11 Feb 2013 The beards were out in force at last night's awards ceremonies in London and LA. Can you guess who these standout awards-night beards belonged to? Published: 11 Feb 2013 The gongs had been got, the speeches spoken and the rain changed to snow. Here are some highlights of where the great and good ventured after the credits rolled on this year's Bafta awards Published: 11 Feb 2013 Bafta winners, including Daniel Day-Lewis, Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck and George Clooney, make their acceptance speeches at the awards ceremony Published: 11 Feb 2013 Angela's Ashes (1999) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This!

Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Based on the best selling autobiography by Irish expat Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes follows the experiences of young Frankie and his family as they try against all odds to escape the ... See full summary » Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 22 titles created 09 Oct 2011 a list of 30 titles created 15 Dec 2011 a list of 35 titles created 10 Dec 2012 a list of 21 titles created 01 Jan 2013 a list of 37 titles created 28 Mar 2014 Search for " Angela's Ashes " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 5 wins & 11 nominations.

See more awards » Videos Edit Storyline Based on the best selling autobiography by Irish expat Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes follows the experiences of young Frankie and his family as they try against all odds to escape the poverty endemic in the slums of pre-war Limerick. The film opens with the family in Brooklyn, but following the death of one of Frankie's siblings, they return home, only to find the situation there even worse. Prejudice against Frankie's Northern Irish father makes his search for employment in the Republic difficult despite his having fought for the IRA, and when he does find money, he spends the money on drink. Written by KB-26 The Hopes of a Mother. The Dreams of a Father. The Fate of a Child. Genres: Rated R for sexual content and some language | See all certifications » Parents Guide: 21 January 2000 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Las cenizas de Ángela See more » Filming Locations: $54,628 (USA) (24 December 1999) Gross: Pierce Brosnan and Stephen Rea were considered for the role of Malachy.

See more » Goofs When Frankie gets the beginnings of conjunctivitis, and he rolls his eyes back, the edges of his full-eye contacts are visible. See more » Quotes Narrator : [First lines] When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how my brothers and I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood. The happy childhood is hardly worth telling. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood. And worse still is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. A Mother's Love's a Blessing' Written by T.P. Keegan (United States) – See all my reviews In the very opening scene of Alan Parker's `Angela's Ashes,' we are informed by the narrator and main character, Frankie McCourt, in a phrase that turns out to be a masterpiece of understatement, that he had a `miserable childhood'  but just how miserable we may not be quite adequately prepared to see. Based on the author's Pulitzer Prize winning autobiographical memoir, this compelling film plunges us directly into the wretchedness and squalor of life in Depression-ridden Ireland, a setting overflowing with disease, starvation, joblessness and despair.

Indeed, by the time the film has hit the 25-minute mark, we have already witnessed the deaths of no fewer than three of Frankie's little siblings. The film, like the novel on which it is based, never flinches from portraying the brutal reality of the life the people of this dreary town must endure. Yet, the film is also, at times, rich in humor and a sense of that unquenchable optimism that somehow exists in even the most hopeless of circumstances. Frankie, despite the harsh conditions of his life, remains a boy focused on the good things that come his way, enduring even a loving but utterly irresponsible ne'er-do-well father (beautifully played by `The Full Monty's Robert Carlyle) with an indulgence and tolerance borne of filial devotion. As Frankie grows from young boy, dutifully fulfilling the parental role for his younger brothers, to a man verging on the edge of adulthood, he feeds on his dreams of moving to America to start a new life full of hope and promise.

The people and situations he encounters on this road create a stunning tapestry of life, teeming with bitterness and coldness it is true, but also with occasional, albeit momentary, displays of warmth, kindness and compassion  whether they be from a seemingly bitter aunt who, much to his astonishment, buys Frankie a brand new set of clothes in which to start his new job, a teacher who inspires him to see life beyond the circumscribed limits of this dreary Irish town or a compassionate priest who counsels Frankie in a moment of dark despair. These help to counterbalance the deadening effects of his father's thoughtlessness and drunkenness, the death of his first love by consumption, the often brutal treatment he receives at the hands of both his teachers and fellow classmates. And all the while there stands his mother, the anchor that holds him firmly in place, a woman beaten down by poverty, the untimely deaths of her children, the fecklessness of her otherwise loving husband - yet a woman so full of the quality of stoic self-sacrifice that it is from she that Frankie draws the strength he needs to move on in his life.

Emily Watson provides a luminous portrait of this woman, triumphantly conveying the longsuffering reserve that helps shield her from the ugliness and dreariness of her life and provides her with the strength to carry on and build into her children a sense of moral rectitude. And the three boys who portray Frankie at various stages of the drama are utterly perfect in their wide-eyed naturalism, as they look upon a world often incomprehensible in its drabness and cruelty. It seems to be becoming a truism lately that, if you want to see the bleakest portrayal of life imaginable, go to see a film set in Ireland. Nowhere does the sun shine less frequently, nowhere do the drab colors of gray and brown so heavily predominate, nowhere does poverty seem so all encompassing and inescapable. The Ireland of `Angela's Ashes' is surely no exception. The filmmakers, moreover, cast a scathing eye on the mindless superstition, bigotry and hypocrisy to be found in much of the blindly pro-Southern Ireland, anti-Protestant, anti-British, anti-Northern Ireland attitude perpetuated by the Catholic Church there in the 1930's.

Thus, in the depths of McCourt's autobiographical story, lies a diatribe with its roots planted deep in political and social protest. Yet, because of our fascination with the boy at the center of the narrative, these qualities filter through subtly, never dominating the proceedings. `Angela's Ashes' is rather, from beginning to end, a moving story about goodhearted, ordinary people learning to cope with the immense hardships life throws their way. In the long run, it certainly makes one happier with one's own lot in life. `Angela's Ashes,' for those who can take its uncompromising view of reality, is a richly rewarding experience. 38 of 43 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes

Question: Who directed the films Mississippi Burning, Evita and Angela's Ashes?
Answer: Alan Parker